+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. (Amen.)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
Who or what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of the conflict with Iran’s leading to “Global Thermo‑nuclear War”? Are you afraid of a Communist, socialist, or Islamic takeover of the U-S government? Are you afraid of the outcome of Pilgrim’s Special Voters’ Meeting next Sunday? Financial difficulties for your family? Declining health of a loved one or yourself? Who or what are you afraid of? There are lots of people or things that we might fear, but this Easter Day and every day our fears are more than met by the resurrection of our Lord! Simply put, “Do not be afraid! Christ has risen!”
There are four mentions of fear in the ten verses of today’s Gospel Reading. That is a lot! The Divinely‑inspired St. Matthew tells us that, for fear of the angel, the guards trembled and became like dead men. The angel told the group of women who came to see the tomb not to be afraid for Jesus had risen, as He had said that He would, but they still departed from the tomb with fear and great joy, so that, when Jesus met them, as St. Matthew uniquely reports, Jesus also told them not to be afraid. The angel and Jesus both recalled Jesus’s Holy (or “Maundy”) Thursday night promise to go before them to Galilee after He was raised up (Matthew 26:32; confer perhaps Matthew 28:16-20 and 1 Corinthians 15:6). We are not told whether or not the women in fact stopped being afraid after hearing and seeing Jesus. We might imagine that the women’s seeing Jesus for themselves calmed their fears, but we also might understand if the women still did not yet understand what had happened and what it meant for them and Jesus’s other followers then and so continued to be afraid.
Today, Jesus’s followers, including us, are on the other side of Pentecost Day, when the Holy Spirit guided the apostles, as He guides us, into all truth (John 16:13). We are sinful by nature, and our sinful nature leads us to commit actual sins of thought, word, and deed, so we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. Our sinful nature should be terrified of God’s righteous wrath, but, if you look around in the world, not everyone is so terrified of God’s righteous wrath, and maybe you do not have to look very far. After the Holy Spirit has led us to be sorry for our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin, and to want to stop sinning, then at least our redeemed nature should no longer be terrified of God’s wrath. We who so repent also should no longer fear any people or any‑thing in this world, for no‑one and no‑thing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Resurrected Lord (Romans 8:39). But, too often we still are afraid, when we no longer should be afraid. In that and other ways, even all we who believe daily sin much and are in need of God’s forgiveness for Jesus’s sake.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the women’s fear was first met by a message about Christ’s resurrection and then by the resurrected Jesus Himself. Unlike events such as Jesus’s birth, death, and ascension, which Scripture does narrate, even if only briefly, events such as Jesus’s conception and resurrection are not narrated by Scripture, though we do get an angelic announcement before the conception and after the resurrection. In today’s Gospel Reading, the angel told the women that Jesus, Who was crucified, was not there, for He had been risen from the dead, as He had said—perhaps both as He had said that He would be crucified and as He had said that He would rise again from the dead (confer 1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Certainly, Scripture and Jesus’s own words had fore‑told and forth-told God’s loving plan so to save us from our sin by grace for Jesus’s sake. For example, in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 31:1-6), we heard God express His everlasting love and continuing faithfulness. That Jesus was raised from the dead shows that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf (Romans 4:25); His resurrection shows that Jesus’s teaching was true (John 2:19; 8:28); and His resurrection shows that Jesus was Who He said He was, that is, God in human flesh (Romans 1:4).
The resurrected Jesus’s still human and nail-marked feet were taken hold of by the women whom the resurrected Jesus met in today’s Gospel Reading (confer Luke 24:40), and they worshipped Him. Beyond their falling before Him and taking hold of His feet, we are not explicitly told of what else their worship consisted, but, by their posture, they essentially showed who they were in relationship to Jesus, and they may well have sought and received from Him the forgiveness of their sins. To be sure, we worship God by seeking and receiving from Him the forgiveness of our sins, and we do so in the ways that He promises to take hold of us and forgive us. In Holy Baptism, we are baptized into Christ Jesus’s death in order that we might walk in newness of life and be united with Him in a resurrection like His (Romans 6:3-5). In Holy Absolution, our pastors forgive us individually with the same authority of the keys that the resurrected Jesus gave to His apostles on Easter evening, as we will hear again in next Sunday’s Gospel Reading (John 20:21-23; confer Matthew 16:19). And, in the Holy Supper, the resurrected Jesus is miraculously and supernaturally present with His Body and Blood in, with, and under bread and wine for the forgiveness of our sins, just as He miraculously left the tomb in a supernatural fashion, before the angel rolled back the stone and sat upon it. There also we are united in Christ with those who have gone before us in the faith.
In this life, our sinful natures are always accused by God’s law and so are terrified of Him for His wrath, but our redeemed natures are instructed by God’s law and revere Him for His grace for Christ’s sake. So, at the same time we fear and love that God so that we at least try both not to do the things that His Commandments prohibit and to do the things that His Commandments enjoin. Part of our rightly respecting God includes our coming into His presence clothed with our “Easter best” not only on Easter Day but on all Sundays, which are also in some sense celebrations of the resurrection of our Lord. We try to let no anxiety hamper our love of and service to both God and our neighbor, even as we recognize that we are wholly and utterly dependent on God. When we fail to live in these ways, as we will fail, then, with daily contrition and faith, we live in God’s forgiveness of sins.
Simply put, “Do not be afraid! Christ has risen!” By grace for Jesus’s sake we are at peace with God and even now rejoice in Him. We are not terrified of those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul, and we rightly revere Him Who can destroy soul and body in hell, that is God (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:5)! In this life we always need to hear both God’s law and His Gospel, but the day is coming when we will be purged of our sin and keep His law perfectly. Jesus has conquered sin and death, and in Him we also are victors (1 Corinthians 15:57). We will see Him, not in Galilee, but wherever we are on the Last Day, when we, if necessary, will be raised bodily; then we certainly will be glorified, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Colossians 3:1-4), in order to spend eternity with Him and with all who have gone before us in the faith. Jesus’s resurrection proves that we who believe in Him will also rise to eternal life (John 11:25-26; 14:19; 1 Corinthians 15:2); we will enjoy the blessed reunion in heaven as God created us, in soul and body. God’s word about us is also true, so we thank and praise Him for our salvation, now and forever.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed, Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +
